


The Show Goes On

by nomelon



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies), Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Rock and Roll, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey, be excellent to each other, party on dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomelon/pseuds/nomelon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future isn't exactly everything they'd been led to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Show Goes On

**Author's Note:**

> **Setting:** 2011\. One possible future. From your point of view. I don't know tech stuff.
> 
>  **A/N:** Written after reading [this interview](http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1661245/keanu-reeves-bill-and-ted-3.jhtml) where Keanu says writers are a mere six weeks away from a draft for B&T3 -eeeeeeep- and gives a few hints to the plot, and somehow this fic appeared.
> 
>  **Warnings:** I should warn you this fic is so saccharine you may only have toothy stumps left by the time you're done reading and will have to gum your food into submission. Just so's you know.

"Dude," Ted said. "Check it out." He played a sweet little riff he'd been working on, his fingers dancing up and down the frets of his guitar, and finished it off with a long, clear note that faded to the distant horizon. Somewhere outside their apartment, a dog barked, a short staccato punch-line that fit in perfectly with the rhythm playing in Ted's head. He tossed his bangs out of his eyes and looked up expectantly.

Bill roused himself from staring out of the window and visibly tried to drum up some enthusiasm. "That's excellent, dude," he said. "Seriously. Stellar hook."

Ted couldn't help but agree. Even all these years later the whole actually being able to play their instruments thing had never really gotten old, but this funk Bill had been in for a while now, that was getting old fast. Ted set his guitar to one side. "Bill? What's wrong, dude? You have been most distracted for... well, for a long time now."

Bill gave a despondent shrug. "Nothing, dude. I'm fine."

"Bullcrap, Bill," Ted said, not unkindly. "Whatever it is, you can get it off your chest. A wise space alien once told me that two heads are better than one."

Bill chewed on his lip as he worked up to telling Ted what was troubling him. "It's just... I've been thinking about it a lot recently, Ted. You know it's over _twenty years_ since we went on our excellent adventure through time? Then there was that whole dying and travelling the afterlife and coming back to life thing."

"Yeah," Ted said, because there were some things that a person never forgot, no matter how much time had passed.

"We've led amazing and textured lives, Ted. I just... It never happened, dude. All the things Rufus said we were going to do. I mean, after we won the Battle of the Bands, I really thought that was it, you know? But since Death went all David Lee Roth on us, and the Good Robot Us's finally ran out of juice, and the princesses quit after that whole creative differences thing and gave us back our rings, then Bill Junior and Ted Junior had that big falling out and went off to separate colleges..." He let out a long sigh. "We even learned how to _play_ , Ted. I mean, we were good. We were really _good_. The whole world saw Wyld Stallyns play that one time; we even visited the futuristic place with the domes where they totally worshipped us... and yet it never came to pass. I just don't get it."

Ted considered himself something of an amateur philosophiser. His thoughts had often meandered along the same paths over the years, but in the end, he hadn't questioned how things had turned out. Maybe Rufus had been wrong, or he'd been building them up to give them something truly spectacular for aim for and overshot the mark a little. Ted had to admit, it had all sounded pretty unlikely for two slackers from San Dimas. In his darker moments he thought that maybe they'd missed their opportunity. Maybe they hadn't been the saviours of mankind that Rufus had painted them to be. Maybe they weren't the dudes to base a future society on. Maybe they just weren't that good. Or maybe, just maybe, all their travels through time had worked something loose in the fabric of existence. Maybe they'd zigged when they should have zagged and changed something that meant the difference between still living in San Dimas, sharing an apartment, working part-time jobs and gigging on the weekends, and being the biggest and most influential band ever in the history of the planet. It was a question that Ted figured there was no answer to and he'd given up on trying to find one a long time ago, focusing instead on helping to raise his son and being a good dad, and living each day as it came, just like always. But now that their kids had gone off to college, both he and Bill had had a lot more time on their hands. Ted figured that maybe this was the reason Bill had recently taken to reflecting on their chequered past, weighing it, measuring it, and finding it lacking.

Bill got up and went and stood by the window, looking out over the parking lot of the Circle K. "I'm just feeling the weight of the years, I guess. I thought we'd have a greater legacy than this." He leaned his shoulder up against the window-frame and rubbed at a smudge on the glass with his thumb. "Sorry, Ted," he said. "Didn't mean to bring you down, dude." He ran a hand over his head, scrubbing through his hair that was cut short these days, unruly curls a thing of the past.

Ted got up and went to stand behind him. He tried to figure out what it was that Bill was staring at so intently, but he couldn't see anything except a couple of parked cars and a shaggy dog sitting on the pavement, its head raised, watching them right back. Ted hesitated, then set his hand on Bill's hip, slipping his thumb under the tail of Bill's shirt and rubbing what he hoped were soothing little circles against his skin. Ted wasn't entirely sure if this was cool. It wasn't exactly something that they did. Bill went very still. Ted didn't realise he was holding his breath until Bill relaxed back against him.

"Sorry, Ted," Bill said again in a soft voice. "I'll snap out of it."

Ted thought through a few things he could say, easy platitudes that rolled right off the tongue but didn't really mean anything, but he didn't really think that was going to cut it. He decided it was time to pull out the big guns. "Hey, Bill?" he said, quieter now because his mouth was closer to Bill's ear. "I've got something else I've been working on. It's, uh, that thing that we wrote together."

Bill looked back over his shoulder. "We've written a lot of things together, Ted."

"Yeah, this was the thing we were writing that night when we first..." Ted trailed off, lost for words.

Bill smiled, the first true smile Ted had seen him wear in days, and nudged Ted with his elbow. "I remember that. But we never finished it, dude."

"I know," Ted said with a goofy smile. "We got totally distracted."

The two of them blushed and cleared their throats and shuffled their feet.

"Yeah, uh, it's still not totally done," Ted said when he found his voice. "But I've been thinking about it recently. It's been in my head a lot. I thought you could help me finish it."

Bill shrugged and picked up his guitar. Ted felt a nervous little flicker of hope in his chest. He'd been working on this song on and off for a long time, never quite able to pull the pieces of it together to his satisfaction, but never quite able to let it go, either. He pushed back his shoulders, grabbed his guitar, and they sat facing each other on the two beds in the room. Ted breathed deep and started to play. He'd added some lyrics since the last time Bill had heard it. It was a love song, through and through, powerful and deceptively simple rather than slow and sappy, with a definite backbone of rock and roll. A lyrical declaration of want and need about not being able to breathe without the other person around, not being able to imagine life without them, how every day is an adventure, filled with discovery and simple pleasures, and how you want nothing more than to spend the rest of your life sharing every moment with them because, when it comes right down to it, you're only half of a whole without them.

There was a long moment of silence when Ted stopped playing.

"I'd forgotten," Bill said softly. "This is good, Ted. I mean, it's really, really good. Why did you think of it now?"

Ted gave a little shrug. "I don't know, man. You've been so down. It was just, you know, you were on my mind. This is what I was thinking about." He couldn't quite meet Bill's eye. "This is how I think about you."

The room was suddenly smaller and warmer; the only sound the faint ticking of the clock on the wall.

"It is?" Bill asked in a small voice.

"That's, uh, sort of where this song came from in the first place, dude. Sort of why I threw caution to the wind and put the moves on you that night."

"Huh," Bill said. "I could have sworn I put the moves on you."

"I think we put the moves on each other, Bill. It's just that..." Ted figured there were moments in your life that define you. Moments when you had to go for broke and you didn't always get advance warning that they were coming. This felt like one of them. He shrugged, his cheeks colouring, his hair falling in his eyes. "I'm totally in love with you, dude. Only since, like, forever. I thought that was obvious."

"Dude," Bill said, sounding kind of choked up. "You know if this is a ploy to lift my flagging spirits, it's totally working."

"No ploy, Bill."

Slowly and precisely, Bill set his guitar to one side, resting it against the wall, then lifted Ted's guitar out of his hands and set it alongside. Then he climbed right into Ted's lap, tilted Ted's head back, and kissed him, deep and serious, his hands on Ted's face. Ted kissed back for all he was worth, shoving his hands under Bill's shirt to stroke up and down the warm expanse of his back.

Things were just getting interesting when Bill groaned and broke their kiss, his hands tight on Ted's shoulders. "My knees, dude."

Ted snorted. "You're such an old fart, Bill."

"Just because you're the wonder boy who never seems to age."

Ted grinned and rolled them so that Bill was sprawled out underneath him, kissing Bill until he stopped grousing. "You look just the same to me, dude."

"Flattery will absolutely get you in my pants, Ted."

"Works for me," Ted said, and popped the button of Bill's fly.

  
\---

  
Ted wrapped himself in a sheet and padded out to the fridge to grab them a couple of beers. He wordlessly handed Bill his guitar on the way back, then made himself comfortable, propped up on pillows against the headboard, chugging happily on his own beer and keeping hold of Bill's for him. Bill strummed his way through the song, singing Ted's lyrics back to him, adding a little here and there, making notes on a dog-eared pad of paper on the mattress between them. It was getting dark outside when they finally put the finishing touches to the song and declared it a done deal. Bill sat back against the pillows and smiled, absently petting the body of his guitar with one hand and Bill's thigh with the other.

"Dude," he said. "That was some _excellent_ post-coital double-team song-writing. I mean, I don't want to be all us-aggrandising or anything, but our song is non-non-non- _non_ triumphant."

Ted grinned until his face hurt. It had been a long time since he'd had seen Bill so energised by something and it was a most excellent sight.

Then Bill sighed, his smile fading, and Ted's heart gave a painful lurch, like he'd shown Bill this innermost part of himself and it still wasn't enough: Bill still had his demons and Ted was still losing him to them.

"I just wish..." Bill said, and shook his head.

"What?"

Bill glanced up, all long, curling eyelashes and doe eyes that made Ted want to do questionable things like write poetry and buy flowers and give away his Megadeth collection without a second thought and declare his undying love loudly from the highest rooftop, then live with it in an agony of regret and indecision, then do it all over again just because of the simple fact that Bill had always had zero clue about the full-on effect he had on Ted.

"I just wish we'd had it back then," Bill was saying. "You know, at Battle of the Bands. I mean, I really sincerely think this is the one. I just... we're never going to get it out there." He sighed. "Our moment has sailed."

Ted sat very still and listened to the universe. There was something tickling just at the edge of his awareness, a familiar tingle, the beginnings of an epic realisation, something amazing, something bodacious, something ambitious and bold that could change their lives forever. If he could just pin down exactly what it was.

"Dude!" he said, sitting up like he was hinged at the waist, spilling the last dregs of his beer over the sheets. It was so damn _simple_. All they'd needed was time, and time was the one thing that had never been a problem for Bill and Ted. "The booth! We just go back and give the song to ourselves at the Battle of the Bands."

Bill frowned. "But, Ted, that's kind of messing with the space-time continuum."

"Cause and effect, dude. It's not like we haven't changed things before."

"But that was in the name of our long ago history report. And it was more like temporarily borrowing historical figures than setting out to actively change things."

"And de Nomolos?"

"He started it!" Bill insisted. "But everything we did, Ted, we were righting wrongs. It was all done in the name of life, love, and liberty."

Ted spread his hands. "How is that any different to what we're doing right now?"

Bill thought for a second. Then he grinned and it made Ted's heart beat a little faster. "Let's go dust off the booth, dude."

  
\---

  
Ted felt seventeen again, clambering over boxes in his dad's garage in the dead of night, about to embark on a most righteous adventure. The booth was just where they'd left it, tucked away in the corner, dusty and neglected and glorious. It looked like a reject from an 80s movie, a remnant from another age. It looked a shining beacon, a vision from the future. A simple box made from wires and plastic, metal and glass, a box that held secrets, that opened up the universe, that made the impossible possible. Ted breathed deep, happy to be alive.

"You want to do the honours?" he offered, giving Bill a half-bow and gesturing to the booth.

Bill grinned and slid back the door. "You think it still works?" he asked as they crowded inside. "I mean, it's been a long time. We don't have to gas it up or anything, right?"

Ted lifted the receiver and held it out to Bill. "Only one way to find out, dude."

  
\---

  
They appeared on stage with a clap of thunder, a whir of futuristic machinery, and a puff of ozone-scented smoke. Ted opened the door and was greeted with the sight of hundreds of thunderstruck faces staring back at him.

Ted nudged Bill. "Battle of the Bands, dude. We made it."

Their younger selves, sporting extreme facial hair, were watching in amazement.

" _Woah_ ," said Young Bill and Young Ted.

Bill cleared his throat. "Greetings, Young Past Us's. We bring you a message from the future."

Young Ted stepped forward and held up his hand, looking very official, Ted thought, although the beard and 'tache really had to go. "No offense, duders," Young Ted said, "but we have just had a most bogus journey as a result of listening to ourselves when it wasn't really ourselves. How do we know that you're really the real Old Future Us's?"

Ted knew just how to handle it. He beckoned Young Ted closer, then whispered in his ear. It was nothing earth-shattering. He just mentioned a few choice titbits about how Young Ted really felt about Young Bill, but had barely even admitted to himself, let alone another person. Young Ted made a sound like he'd just swallowed a bug and blushed scarlet. "Yeah, okay, it's us," he said, studiously examining his sneakers, avoiding the curious look Young Bill was sending his way.

Ted shot Bill a quick air-guitar over his shoulder and Bill grinned and rolled his eyes. Ted got it. Young Them were totally adorable, deeply entrenched as they were in their denial.

Bill held out a sheet of paper covered in his familiar scrawl. "This is why we're here. This is the song you should use tonight."

Young Bill looked it over, nodding his head at the lyrics, looking grudgingly impressed. He scratched at his jaw and shot Young Ted a glance. "I don't know, dudes," he said. "We put a lot of work into that other song."

Bill nudged Ted with his shoulder and Ted had to bite down on his grin. "The thing is, Young Bill," Bill said. "In retrospect..." He see-sawed his hand. "It sounds kind of like a Kiss rip-off, dude."

  
\---

  
Their work done, they travelled back another half an hour just to watch their fight with de Nomolos go down. It was totally obvious he was going to lose. Evil never learned. They shook their heads in a disapproving fashion and relived a little of that old victory buzz.

"Let's go, dude," Bill said as soon as de Nomolos was trapped in the cage, putting a stop to his evil meddling in time once and for all.

"Don't you want to see how we do with the new song?" Ted asked. "This could be the start of everything, Bill."

Bill shook his head. "Nah. I know how this show ends. Let the Young Us's have their destiny."

"Yeah, okay," Ted said. "After all, we get to have their future."

"Excellent!" they said, and shared a quick and triumphant air-guitar.

They were almost back to the booth, hidden away where they'd left it in the shadows backstage, when a babe of epic and gravity-defying proportions strode past on her way to the stage.

"Rufus!" they exclaimed as one.

The woman stopped dead in her tracks and turned slowly to face them. Her eyes widened slightly, but she otherwise showed no signs of surprise at their sudden appearance. "Gentlemen," Rufus said, unflappable as always.

"Been a long time, Rufus!" Ted said.

Rufus looked more closely at them, and then at their younger selves getting ready to play on stage after their brief and important conversation with their future selves of half an hour ago. Ted scratched his head. Sometimes figuring out how to explicate the complexities of time travel could be most taxing.

"Or no time at all," Rufus was saying. "Do I even want to know what you're doing here?"

"Probably not, Rufus," Bill said, smiling broadly. "This is just a brief pit-stop in time. We should probably get going and leave events to unfold."

"No doubt," Rufus agreed.

"Catch you later, Rufus!" they said as one. "Come visit us in the future any time," Ted added.

"I'll keep that in mind." Rufus tipped his imaginary hat. "Catch you later, Bill and Ted."

In the booth Ted slid the door closed behind them and started punching in numbers for their return trip, naturally remembering to dial one number higher, because some lessons only ever had to be learned once.

Bill grabbed his wrist to stop him completing the call. "Ted, wait, hold up. Are you sure we just did the right thing? This could change everything. I mean, who knows how things turn out now? With the band, with the princesses, with everything." He swallowed nervously and looked Ted in the eye. "With us, dude."

Ted leaned in and gave him a brief and solemn kiss, with just a hint of tongue, because Ted was many things but he had never claimed to be a saint. "Ain't never gonna happen, dude. You and me were meant to be. All the rest is just..."

"Helping to put an end to war and poverty?" Bill asked, and it was like a step back in time. Ted could see curly hair and cut-off t-shirts, a million lazy afternoons spent making excellent intro videos and playing Mario until their thumbs hurt. "Aligning the planets and bringing them into universal harmony? Allowing for meaningful contact with all forms of life from extra terrestrials to common household pets? Giving people music that's _excellent_ for dancing?"

Ted grinned, buoyant and happy and ready to take on the world. "I was going to say the icing on the cake, dude, but that totally works too."

**Author's Note:**

> <http://nomelon.livejournal.com/208939.html>


End file.
